just a thursday

i arrived after she died but before the funeral home and was asked to clean the body so that the family could continue to pay final respects.
i hope i masked the mixture of horror and morbid curiosity that surged through me.
"of course, of course." i managed in an appropriately somber voice.
I walked back to the bedroom where Lillie had spent her last night surrounded by her closest friends and family laboring death. The room now was empty of all life. Everyone had left, the door shut.
I drew a deep breath, opened the door, stepped in and closed it behind me.
I have been working with the dying for almost a year and a half now, but this is only the second body I have seen.
a body looks so different from the person it once housed.
all the fluids of the body stop fighting gravity and surrender finally to the path of least resistance.
the blood settles to the bottom of veins and arteries and trickles down to the lowest place in the body like water running through an elaborate pipping system to reach the collecting pool. This leaves the skin pale and latex-like.
the bowels evacuate. Urine and stool ooze out as sphincters and muscles relax.
the mouth and eyes won't stay closed. Instead of a window to the soul, the eyes now sink back and look at nothing. The tongue,once the vessel of flavor and texture, voice and thought, is now dry and retracted to the back of the mouth.
I cursed my brother for dragging me to so many scarey movies. It was absolutely his fault I was fighting the fear that at any moment this body would gasp one final breath, or complete a quiet zombification, without warning, grab me with cold death fingers and pull me from the living to the undead. It was also his fault that I was wondering at this precise moment if the cold air was in fact the product of the air conditioning, or in fact, more believably, Lillie's lingering ghost. I reined in my imagination and drew upon a spindly thread of professionalism.
I drew a basin of warm water half wondering to myself if the temperature of the water even mattered now.
I submerged a soft wash cloth into the basin and squeezed out the water. I waited an impossibly long moment before I touched the body. "please please please don't be stiff." If rigormortis had settled in, I am not sure i could have maintained what sliver of professionalism I was managing.
I washed her face, her arms, her fingers, chest, stomach, legs, feet, and toes.
I crossed her arms over her chest and rolled the body to one side to wash the back.
what happened next scared the shit out of me.
as I rolled her on her side....
she exhaled....
a long, loud, rattly breath pushed out past phlem-filled lungs and her last breath, buried deep was expelled. I expelled my own horrified breath and waited with face cringed for a moment to see if she would breathe back in, if the heart would restart, if we all had incorrectly, prematurely assumed death.
a quiet moment and.then something worse happened...death escaped her body. it leaked out of her lungs, past her mouth and onto the bed. It was the life-choking phlem draining out of her lungs: thick, green, muck puddled up on the pillow.
I swallowed hard against my contracting stomach.
"now, now is not a good time to get sick."
a set my jaw and went back to the task at hand.
I washed her back, which was in its entirety a subtle purple from the pooled blood, like a fresh bruise, and removed the duoderm pads that bandaged the bed sores. i cleaned the wounds again, which looked so strange now that the body was no longer actively festering upon them.
I eased Lillie back down on her back cleaned off her face and changed the pillowcase. I put clean sheets on the bed, and pulled her favorite quilt up to her chest, propped her head up a little on a second pillow and tucked her in for the family to render any last words.
I left the room, left the house, and pretended that that is was just a normal thursday and that nothing out of the ordinary had just happened in that place back there a million miles ago